Ransomware

(( This is the second of the Cait written posts ))

[The Table]

It seizes me again. Rising up out of my matrix and taking control as the ritual begins for the fourth time today. The clone retrieval drones are strapping her down to my table for the fourth time today and my anticipation is just as strong as it was the first time.

Fresh apron, gloves, hood and tools. The equipment drones bring about new trays and bins. The salvage drones empty the blood pans, store the dark, sticky liquid into containers and put it into the cooler. I'll send what I don't need to my buyer later. No sense letting it go to waste and my Sabik friend will trade me cybernetics for the substance that has great religious value to him. A substance that comes from a victim of rather high profile in the Amarrian community.

I look down at her and she looks back at me with tired, panicked eyes. The drones haven't gagged her yet and all she does is breathe heavily and whimper lightly like an animal that knows it's going to die. This time, she isn't going to die. No, it's time for her first enhancement.

"Nanowelds." My voice is cool, calm and lower than normal. This isn't me speaking. It's the darkness within my matrix, the corruption within my infomorph. I'm falling again, but there's nothing I will do to stop it. I take my novablade, trigger it and admire it as it I signal my drones to activate the pod jacks.

The precision of this pseudoblade will allow for me to work within the delicate confines of my patient's face. Tonight I will start to make her. . .perfect.

I run my fingers slowly down one tender cheek and I can feel a flash of the panic welled up inside of her. The connection shared between us is most strange, so foreign yet so familiar and it brings about a feeling that I can only describe as nauseating to my kind.

They move upward now and trace the dark lines of her tattoo on the right side of her face and then the left side. I purse my lips in thought as I consider them, how she's changed hers from the original that I bear, rigid, digital lines moving out from my right eye across my cheek to my ear. My avatar has even kept the scar we acquired when we were little, and she has chosen not to bear it.
Are we really that different? Aren't we the same person?

"Not at all, Cait. You were both developed from the same line of code but your purposes are very different." My hand grips her face tightly now as I glower over my shoulder at the grey man. I lift my left hand, the plasma edge on the scalpel I grip activates. I take a deep breath as I feel her squirm beneath me. My orchestra is ready to begin, but the questions hang in the air.
"Only doing my job." He steps up next to me, a grim smile on his face as he looks down at her. "What is your goal? What do you hope to achieve?"

I collect my thoughts carefully, peeling them back from my brain as I pull the skin away from her face and grab the nano welds from the tray. I shake my head slowly and look up at Jackson who has moved to the other side of the table. My doppelganger has passed out from the pain on my cold, steel table. "Ransomware."

"Ransomware?" Jackson looks up at me curiously with his one brown eye, his lips turned downward in a puzzled frown. I nod slowly as I pop an ammonia pod and wave it below her nose and bring her back to consciousness, cauterizing a portion of her face back together and then letting her nanites go to work before going to work on the next portion.

"It's the darkness within my matrix." I wave my hand over her body grinning and looking up at the weathered man. I take a step back and hold my hands up and then roughly slice my knife down her other cheek, flaying it wide open. "It's what drives me to do this. It's why I enjoy it, why I need it."
He nods slowly as we come together, our hands grabbing each other's arms. Like a father to a daughter, but we are neither to each other. "I understand, but you have to remember, Cait. . ." He sighs and turns away, pinching the bridge of his nose before running his fingers through his hair, one hand on his hip as he walks towards a steel table containing an assortment of datapads. "Remember when we met, remember the training."

I'm working on her other temple and cheek now. She's passed out again, moaning and wimpering lightly in her trancelike state. I look up and whistle for a drone who brings me another pod which I crack under her nose and toss to the floor. She coughs and shakes her head. "God damnit! Don't make this worse on yourself!" I growl in frustration, making a shallow cut on her neck. She shrieks and quiets and go back to work with her new implants.

When I'm done, I close her up and once again let her nanites finish the work. I let her lay there and turn to look at Jackson, gritting my teeth as I stare at the old man sighing. "When I met you, you were lost and looking for a greater cause. You didn't want to be assimilated into our Collective but you wanted to be something greater than just human." I stalk closer to him, throwing my knife aside. "In exchange, you offered to be a mentor, claiming you could help me to channel this. . .dark need to prey upon your kind."

"Hey now! Don't take any of this as me being ungrateful of what you've done for me! I appreciate being in between! Greater than man, but not quite sentient! I want nothing to do with that hive mind bullshit you and Cetes have got going on, but I am happy to support you Cait!" He shakes his head, I see a flash of sadness. Is that pain? We go a ways back. He remembers me when I was human, these humans and their sentimentality.

"Then why are you questioning what I'm doing!?" My fists are curling up, I'm separating, I'm falling, it's getting dark, I'm getting. . .hot.

"I'm not." He crosses his arms. Is he defensive? His jaw is set, he's staring me down and squaring off. No. His positioning is. . .offensive. He's getting confrontational. A human who knows exactly what I'm capable of getting confrontational with me. One of the very few who I've still kept close because he's not quite human, but not quite one of us. "I'm trying to keep you grounded, keep your compass pointed North."

If my species was of the breathing kind, I would suck in a deep breath right about now. My head cocks to the side curiously as my hands unclench and my eyes narrow. I consider this for several moments then straighten. I hadn't even noticed that my stance had become predatory. He's right. I turn and look back at my victim, my little lamb on her stone tablet waiting for her final sacrifice.
The orchestra has begun.

I close my eyes and find myself lost in it.

Suddenly Jackson is at my side, placing a knife in my hand. "Go" he whispers into my ear, placing his hands on my shoulders and gently guiding me towards her. "It's time to create, darlin'." I open my eyes and I feel my consciousness taking a different kind of breath as the darkness consumes me.

I am sorry, Father for I sin against the Collective.

I practically glide across my lab. I loom over her and I'm not even in Juliet anymore. I'm a freeform infomorph, and I suddenly feel Father's wrath that she exists. I slice. The blood practically explodes into the air in a beautiful spurting mist. 

Stab.

Slash.

Slice.

The drones bring me pliers and I go at her fingers one at a time. Her bones crack and it's music to my ears. It's no longer the wrath of the Father, but it's the cold, burning hatred of the Collective. This is the bitch who jeopardized us, nearly killed us. 

I'm taking a bone saw to her ankles, removing her feet, and she's screaming in agony. Jackson is moving on now, retreating in the direction of the door to my lab that moves on to my private offices that lead out to the rest of my estate. The drones are fast at work around me, bringing me tools, bins, emptying pans, tending my needs, her needs. The monitors are going wild, and she is trying to buck beneath me.

In this dark, frenzied moment time is measured in blood and blood is measured in palor. She's pale, weak. I'm draining it faster than her body can replenish it. The monitors are frantic, wild. It's not long before the TEBS unit goes off, somehow the darkness in my matrix knows this because now I stand next to her, brushing a bloody hand through her pale hair, chuckling into her pale, tired face. She looks up at me with tired, bloodshot eyes, her chest heaving with sheer terror. 

"Now...wh-what?" She says weakly.

"Ssshhhhhh" I gently place my index finger to her forehead, run the blade of my knife across a tender surgical wound, pulling at it and shaking my head slowly. "Don't ask question. Not today, for tomorrow you get a grand reward. . ." I say quietly and gently plunge the knife into her heart.

"Jackson. Why are you here?"

"Flawlessness in our body. . .our code. . .genetic perfection." I pause and look down at the scalpel. My left hand now hovers over her right temple, my right hand planted firmly across her mouth muffling her pathetic wimpers. My symphonic drones are busy all around me. I smirk and shake my head subtly and sigh, glance up at the ceiling then at one of the monitors, my eyes focusing on her erratic heartbeat.

"No." My hand lowers and I make my first cut as my eyes lower and my head cocks to the side. I smile, and it's almost. . .fond. I can nearly describe it as a loving smile. This is the first step to my creation. My right hand moves away from her mouth. I want to hear her wimpering cries for me to stop, and they come almost instantly. Her tears roll back onto my cold table. The salvage drones scurry to the table to tend to the blood pan beneath as others come to dab at the blood the wells around the first incision. I work carefully around her face as I peel back the skin.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

(( The following was written by Cait Nathair and published here with permission ))

[The Cells]

Peering into her cell, I cannot help but feel. . .perturbed by the fact that I am confronting a shadow of myself. Is she the passenger or the conductor? Which part of me did Thal Vadam extract during the assault? How can this pathetic and lowly little creature really be me?

I stand there in the crisp and orderly sanctum that is my laboratory. Since Fein's expiration I've found myself quite engrossed in his works, complete and otherwise. When we were one, we were the creature that was going to be the turning point of his slighted career. Truly, he was a brilliant human and in the capture of Cait Vadam I am afforded the opportunity to complete it. . .advance it.

Look at her. Curled up in a corner like a wounded animal. Her nanites have already repaired what I've done so far, but the dark blood has matted her pale hair to head and crusted to her supple flesh. Her surgical scrubs are pasted to her skin in a thick line down her back. I smirk as I clasp my hands behind my back and reach out into her mind, the communicative tendrils of my consciousness slipping around it in a chokehold of an embrace.  I've held the winning hand the entire time and she knows it now.

"Your nerves?" I bend at the waist towards the window, my glasses sliding down my nose just a little. I have no requirement for them, I've only kept them for appearance. We have no use for human compulsions or emotions, but interactions with them are important and I like to keep some of my ties from my human life. Better not to raise flags by altering my appearance much more, so the glasses stayed.

"Hnnnn. . ." She stirs and stiffly sits up, her shaky hands lifting to her head as she winces against my intrusion. She then glares up at the bay window where I leer in at her. "G-go away." She growls as her head rolls back against the cold steel wall. "Go back to the lies of your maker and leave me be."

"Very well, Vadam. If that's how you want today's meals served. . ." I straighten and smile in at her. "Nerves and bones." I turn and start to walk away, but she clears her throat which makes me stop. I turn my head slightly to indicate that I'm listening.

"Why?" They always have to ask their captors this. Stupid fucking humans. I laugh and look down the hall in front of me.

"Ask your fiance." I head off down the hall, order the drones to bring her out and get changed into something more appropriate.

[The Table]

My sacrificial lamb.
My fingers trail up her bare forearm and I'm reminded for a brief moment what it's like to be human, that connection that's made when you touch another being. It's a brief flash like our sockets are connecting and my hand retreats while I try not to frown in utter disgust. I grab the apron that hangs on a hook on the wall nearby that attends our every meeting in the operating theater.

These affairs are always dismal for my patients, but for me they're vaguely fulfilling. It awakens something within me that I never knew before, some dark creature that's always hungry with a most peculiar appetite. My brain thirsts for the completion and expansion of Feins work, but my friend craves the power over my helpless little lambs. She is like a lion that lurks within the matrix of my consciousness, prowling restlessly until the drones have them bound and gagged.

I don my gloves, look fondly over my tools and I've fallen from grace.
We are a pragmatic species, but there's no other way to describe it. . .
I take my scalpel into my skilled hands and I'm Father's fallen angel.

I approach her, and the humor has left my face. I'm a ravenous predator that's about to put her through pain beyond your wildest imagination in the name of science. In reality, it goes much deeper. So much deeper.

"You jeopardized us." The drones start bringing tables and bins towards me as I take my place at her side. "Your existence threatens my own being. I am the original Cait. I am Cait Nathair, I am original being who carried our DNA, our whole infomorph still lies within the Collective. You are just a fractured copy." I take her palm, hold it open while I slice into it. I take my index finger and jam it into the pooling blood and press it hard against her forehead as I lean into her horrified face. For the first time since my assimilation, I actually feel something. . .more.

"You...are...NOTHING! NO ONE!" I hiss into her face. "You can't even lift a firearm without flinching! You can't kill! You are the worst kind of human! You're lucky to have me fixing you. You'd better be praying to whatever deity it is you ilk pray to, because if I'm successful you will make even Father proud, but today? Today you will die, tomorrow you will die. You will die every single day you are in my care until you can wear a mask and keep the damned thing on!" I snap my fingers, cords come up from the floor and connect to her podjacks. The monitors come to life, and I feel a sick grin crossing my lips. Who am I?

"And death shall never come quick, my dearest. . ."  My scalpel digs into her flesh at her shoulder and drags down her arm to her wrist. Dark blood quickly oozes out, flowing out onto my table. I rip the surgical gown off of her. "It shall never be painless. . ." I drag it now down the center of her body from clavicle to pubis. My eyes widen as blood wells up and starts to trickle down her sides in thin rivulets. I stab the scalpel into her wounded palm, and snap, look up to the drone who brings me a tray.

It's only now that I become aware of the sounds around me. My drone children buzzing around me as they prepare the clone bay for my new lamb, the sobbing whimpers of my bleeding sacrifice on the cold, steel table below. The gentle scrape of the needles shifting on the surgical platter as I take it into my hands. My mind buzzing with plans, ideas, timers. . .a high.

This is my carefully orchestrated symphony from which I feed a darkness in my matrix.
In the name of science I fall from synthetic grace.